Identity

Dear Friend,
It’s been years, hasn’t it? Remember our childhood? Remember our school? It’s just your school, now, since I moved away. Since I ran away from everything and started a new identity for myself. I don’t imagine that you got that chance; I don’t imagine they left you alone after I left. I wish that they isolated me, instead of torturing me because I was different.
But that’s the thing. I am different. I am not like them, not only in my strawberry hair in a sea of chocolate and blonde. Not only in my ghostly face. Not only in my sapphire-jade eyes. But I am different. I can understand pain because of what they put me through. I can see the light when they are stuck in the darkness of their own desires. I am free, yet they are imprisoned.
Remember first grade? Remember the day we met? Everyone else was dressed in cherry and azure, but when I walked in, just slightly behind my mother, that’s when the hell started. I was dressed like a cute little Wednesday Addams, and my mother was proud to have me as her daughter. I sat next to you, remember? I was shy, and so were you. We were both new students, but you didn’t have to deal with the persecution that I did. They were cruel, merciless, if only they could see me now. I’m still that little Wednesday Addams, only now, Wednesday has grown up a bit, Wednesday is mature, and she wants her tormenters to see what she has become.
I am different from them. Yet when we got older, they tried to make me conform. They tried to turn my black uniform into their washed-out attire. They didn’t succeed, as much as I wanted to fit in. When they started trying to programme my mind into something that it was not, that’s when I left. I found somewhere else, Friend, and I was accepted, not fully, but I could still be myself almost entirely.
Now I’m somewhere else again. I am happy where I’m at. I could always be myself here and be accepted. But I will come back for you. I will come and see you so that you, and everyone else, can see what I have become. No, not what I have become, what I have always been. I was always beautiful, I was always sweet. I am a princess like my father always told me before I went to sleep. So are you, Friend. You are too. The others, they have lost themselves in the ever changing masks of society. The do not know themselves as I do.
Remember seventh grade? That was the year that I left. You were starting to lose yourself. You were becoming one of them. I suppose it was inevitable that one of us would give in, but you were always the stronger one. At least, that’s what I thought. You weren’t supposed to be lost. But you were gone before I left to a better place.
They drove me into depression; they drove me to thoughts of death. It was their fault that I believed that I was worthless, ugly, and a mistake. I was an accident, though, but it was a “happy accident”. I brought joy into my mother’s life when she needed something the most. Doesn’t that tell you anything? I am not worthless, and I was born for a reason.
But remember what happened? We both started to notice boys. You more than I. I think the others saw before I did. I think that’s why the called me those new names. That’s why I was so desperate to get a boyfriend, not so I wouldn’t be alone, but so that they wouldn’t have a reason to call me those names. First it was my hair, not quite scarlet, but too much so to be blonde, my fair skin, dotted with freckles, and my oddly painted eyes, the colour somewhere between cerulean and emerald. Then it was my clothes. We both dressed like the boys did, but me, I also was growing faster than the other girls. I started to look like a woman before they did, so the boyish clothing was to be thrown away in favour of dresses and feminine shirts and jeans. I could see tears in my mother’s eyes every time her and I went shopping for clothes, as she saw me grow another size. But after the clothes, after the growth spurts and the new developments in my body, it was sexuality.
Why did they do that to me? Why did they hurt me because they thought I was a homosexual? What gave them the right to be so cruel? Surely not God and I still don’t think it was the devil, I don’t think the devil can be as cruel to anyone as they were.
I am scared now to walk next to lockers, and I fear being alone in class. I still feel like a target, but I am more relaxed now. I am somewhere else. I am somewhere that I can be accepted for who I am. I am happy.
Your friend,
              An individual.



©Robbyn Anne Lysne, December 22, 2006